keyword: loathe, title: the last temptations in misc. flash fiction

Three A.M. I’m awake again. The prescriptions in my blood need the toilet more than my brain needs the sleep, I guess. Stumbling back through kitchenette, the cat jumps upon the counter and says “meow”, asks “meow”, demands “meow”. I know this meow, his “I need cat treats” meow. Even though it’s late and I loathe being anywhere than in my bed, because I love the little dude, I look for the bag of chicken something-or-other but come up wanting. Have we run out? No idea, I just know my tiny friend’s in need, and I feel terrible I’ve let him down. He depends on me for things like these but here I am, failing my side of the bargain between Felix and myself.

I want to explain to him, it’s three in the morning and I am barely conscious, diphenhydramine demanding sleep while atorvastatin and melatonin tell me I need to piss again instead. Even if I were able to drive a car, the grocery won’t open for hours yet. But this is all beyond him as, of course, he is a goddamn cat. Felix is smart as kitties go but business practices are not a rational concept, even to an Albert Felinestein. Instead, there in the loneliness of the night, Felix is left feeling betrayed and I, left feeling guilty I can’t explain myself.

And I wonder if this how God feels too.

Three A.M. God wakes up to take the heavenly equivalent of a nocturnal pissing, hears me screaming from my nightmares asking why, my cousin’s murder when I was a kid, my dad’s heart attack in middle age, the lovers and near-lovers who all decided I was not enough, asking why, as plainly as the cat demands his pressed-sawdust-and-chicken-sweepings delights. Maybe as the Lord drains Yon Holy Lizard up there, God feels bad for me too.

But God can’t do anything either, can’t even explain it to my understanding, also feels terrible.

Maybe God’s as helpless on that transcendent scale as we are on this earthly one, would help me if God could but the store that sells companionship and closure is just fresh out. Wished it could all be explained to me but humans, even halfway-clever ones like myself, are just too stupid and so we reach our impasse as well.

Maybe we all would fix each other if we could but we’re all just idiots in our own ways, on our own levels, we all feel guilty for it, but it can’t be changed so here we are. God and animal and humans as well, stuck in-between beast and divinity such as we are, all just fumbling in the dark, just trying to piss and go back to sleep without letting anybody down, largely failing even at that.

Three A.M. in distant streetlight blue, just wishing I could help the goddamn cat or failing that at least explain my failures and hoping there’s a God out there that feels for me about the same.